no brains to speak of, a fine moustache, and a blasé air. Needless to say, he was not my style at all.
'What luck!' he said in his tired haw-haw voice as he sat down beside me. 'Arrived in the nick of time. Can't stand these dinners where you have to draw. Ten to one you draw something awful.' He searched among the little slips of paper I had already written. Then he picked up one and put it in his pocket. He handed me another with what he evidently thought a killing air.
'Why should we draw?' he said looking at me as if I were a prize sheep in a lottery. 'Let's consider that fixed up, shall we?'
Before I could say anything someone came up and began to talk to us. The little slip of paper lay on my lap. It bore the name of 'Juliet.' 'Romeo,' I presumed, reposed in the pocket of Mr. de Vere Smith de Vere. I was furious, justly and properly furious.
I got hold of Berengaria quietly when the last of the callers had gone.
'Who of all those coming to-night,' I asked her, 'would you say that a conceited young man who fancies himself greatly would least like to take down to dinner.'
'Oh, Mrs. Tomasino,' laughed Berengaria promptly. 'She's quite the plainest woman I have ever seen. She's quite black, and she will insist on talking though she never talks sense. We have to ask her to a dinner like this, you know, because her husband is an official of sorts and actually on the table of precedence itself.'
